Tokens Read online

  Was it fear? Confusion?

  Hope?

  God, let me be right about this. Please, let me be right about this.

  “Get up,” Mark said.

  “I don’t think I’ll do that, either,” Ana said.

  “I said, get up!”

  Then he was there and reaching for her. But she took some comfort in the fact that he had walked right past the big Henry rifle hanging on the wall, which he could have easily grabbed. Maybe he thought he didn’t need it because of his size. He was so much bigger than her—bigger than all of them by a huge margin—that when he grabbed her elbow and jerked her out of the chair, she thought her entire arm was going to pop out of its socket.

  Fortunately, it didn’t, mostly because she was readying herself for it and there was just a stabbing pain instead of dislocation.

  He began pulling her toward the door, which was awkward because he was dragging her by the right arm while she was still turned to face the table.

  “You bitch. You ungrateful bitch,” he spat out.

  “Mark, please, don’t do this,” Sarah said from behind them.

  Mark stopped and whirled around and glared at the other woman. “Don’t.”

  Sarah didn’t. At that moment, Ana wasn’t sure if the older woman remembered what else she was going to say.

  Instead, Sarah looked back down at her plate. As did the two girls.

  Mark turned and continued dragging Ana toward the door. “Some people just have to learn the hard way. But they learn. They always learn.”

  “Is that what you did to them?” Ana asked. “You taught them lessons, Mark?”

  “You’re damn right I did. You wouldn’t believe how mouthy they were in the beginning. The amount of back talk, the ungratefulness—”

  He would have kept going if she hadn’t swung backward with her left hand, her fingers balled into a fist, and struck him in the right ear. Ana was shocked she had actually landed where she intended because of her off-balance stance. Her intention was just to bother him enough to loosen his grip on her right arm so she could pull it free.

  Instead, she hit him in the ear and he staggered, at the same time reflexively letting go of her right arm.

  She stumbled back as he spun on her, his face turning a furious red color. “You bitch!”

  “You said that already,” Ana said. Her voice was calm. She wasn’t sure why it was so calm, but it always was when she found herself in these situations. It was a survival instinct, something she’d honed since The Purge days. Fear led to chaos, which led to indecision, which led to death. She’d seen it happen to so many people.

  Mark’s face contorted as if he was slowly, slowly realizing she wasn’t who she had let him think she was. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I already told you,” Ana said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re lying!” he shouted, even as he lunged at her.

  She didn’t move. She wanted to, desperately—to leap out of the path of his outstretched meaty fingers. But she needed him to come to her, so she didn’t budge an inch. He was too big, with too large of a reach, and if he knew what she was going to do next, he would have had a good to great chance of stopping her.

  But he didn’t know what she had planned, or what she had hidden in the left sleeve of her jacket, until it was too late. Until he was almost on top of her and there was no turning back for either one of them.

  Ana thought, God, let me be right. Please, let me be right about this as the cold handle of the knife fell into her warm right palm.

  Mark saw all five inches of the silver that made up the blade under the dim candlelight, and he stopped moving forward, but it was too late. She made up the short distance that still remained between them, and his eyes were widening when she stabbed him in the side of the neck.

  He made a sound like a pig squealing, but she didn’t stop punching the knife into him—again and again—until he was on the floor, and she was crouched over him and there was blood everywhere.

  She was ready for that, though, because there was always blood.

  There was always so much blood…

  Two

  “You killed him.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  Sarah didn’t reply. Not right away.

  Finally, the older woman said, “You weren’t even scared.”

  “I was,” Ana said.

  “You didn’t look scared.”

  I hide it well, Ana thought, but she said, “Believe me, I was. I’d be crazy not to be against a man his size.”

  “You didn’t look scared,” Sarah said again.

  Ana didn’t respond the second time.

  Instead, she put her hands on her hips and looked over at the Tennessee Walker as it chewed on some grass nearby. The chestnut-colored horse was waiting for her this morning when she stepped outside the cottage, having somehow escaped from the barn next door where he’d been kept overnight. The animal had brought her all the way from Kanter 11 in Kansas and would have kept carrying her down south to Texas if she hadn’t left the road to evade nightfall.

  Behind her, Sarah had finished filling up the hole and laid down the shovel to sit in the shade of a large elm tree. They were close enough to the house that Ana could smell the smoke coming from its chimney. By now, Carol and Kerry would have finished wiping the floorboards. It had been nearly two hours since Ana and Sarah dragged the body outside using a rug and buried it out here, about a football field away. Ana was prepared to go farther than that, but Sarah had said it was far enough.

  Sarah picked up a canteen from the ground now and took a drink before holding it out to her. The older woman looked so different from yesterday—younger, more vibrant, despite the gruesome task they’d had to perform with Mark’s body.

  I wasn’t wrong. Thank God I wasn’t wrong.

  Ana walked over and took the canteen. Both of her palms hurt, but it could have been worse if Sarah hadn’t given her gloves to dig with. Like the other woman, her clothes were covered in fresh dirt and specks of Mark’s dry blood. She made a mental note to change shirts and pants after they were done.

  Ana sat down next to the other woman and handed the canteen back. She leaned against the tree trunk, the rough bark pricking against her back through her jacket. It was a nice, cool morning, and that helped with the fatigue. She hadn’t felt this tired all night while waiting for sunlight to bury Mark’s body; but then, stabbing a man to death didn’t take nearly as much effort as dragging him outside and digging a hole big and deep enough to hide the crime.

  “How did you know?” Sarah asked.

  “About what?”

  “What he was doing to us.”

  “I saw the girls at the stream earlier. Then there was the way you guys acted around him. I know the signs, Sarah. I’ve seen it before. Too many times to count.”

  “You must think I’m a coward.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I let him get away with it. Doing things to me, to the girls…”

  “He was a big man.”

  “I tried, you know. That rifle in the house? The first month he brought me here, I finally grabbed it and tried to kill him.”

  “What happened?”

  “I missed, and he beat me. I couldn’t walk for a week. Poor Carol had to do all the work around the house. After that…” The older woman caressed fresh bruises along her left arm. Ana hadn’t seen it yesterday or earlier this morning, but they had been there the entire time. “He hasn’t touched the girls. I mean, not in the other way. As long as I kept him away from them…”

  “You said he brought you guys here?”

  Sarah nodded. “At first, there was just the two of us. Carol and me. Then, two years ago, he showed up with Kerry. She doesn’t remember much of what happened, how he…met her. You think it’s possible she doesn’t remember?”

  “You can forget a lot
of things if you want to badly enough. Two years ago, she would have been eight. It might be better for her if you don’t make her relive it.”

  “I know. That’s why Carol and I haven’t tried to get her to talk about it. It’s done. It’s over with. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  Ana stared at a wisp of lazy smoke in the near distance. “Will they be all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said.

  “What about you?”

  Sarah bit her bottom lip but didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have to stay here,” Ana said. “There are a couple of towns not far from here that would take you in. You and the girls. Tell them they’re your daughters.”

  “I’m not their mother. Mark wasn’t their father, either, but you already know that.”

  “No one’s going to care as long as both Carol and Kerry keep it to themselves. Traditional families are overrated, anyway.”

  Sarah remained quiet. She seemed to be thinking about it, even as she wiped at dirt and sweat on her forehead with an equally dirty and sweat-covered palm.

  Finally, she said, “I’ll think about it. Ask them what they want to do.”

  Ana nodded but didn’t add anything. She glanced down at her watch instead.

  Almost ten in the morning. She should have been on the road by now, heading south. There was no telling how far Wash had gotten since abandoning her in Kanter 11 three days ago.

  You idiot. When I find you, I’m going to kick your ass for that.

  “Is it true?” Sarah said after a while.

  “Is what true?”

  “What you told us about following a friend down south.”

  Ana nodded. “Yeah.”

  “He must be a good friend.”

  “Maybe…” Then, when Sarah gave her a curious look, “I mean, yeah, he’s a good friend. But that’s not why I’m trying to find him.”

  “So why are you?”

  “I owe him.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He saved my life. And my sister’s.”

  “Where is she now? Your sister?”

  “Waiting for me in Kansas. When I’m done down here, I’ll go back to her, and we’ll go home.”

  “After you’ve found your friend in Texas.”

  Ana nodded.

  “The Lone Star State is a big place,” Sarah said.

  Ana sighed. “So people keep telling me.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “I know.”

  They didn’t say anything after that. Instead, they sat silently under the morning shade of the tree and took turns drinking from the canteen until they had regained enough strength to stand up and walk back to the cottage.

  Halfway there, Ana said, “I could use some supplies.”

  “Anything,” Sarah said. “Texas is still far away. If we have what you need, they’re yours…”

  She left the three women with the same advice she had given Sarah earlier: Stay, or leave the cottage and head north toward one of the two nearby towns that she had passed yesterday. Both would have welcomed them in.

  “We’ll think about it,” Sarah said as Ana climbed into the Tennessee Walker’s saddle.

  “They’re good people,” Ana said. “You could make a good life far from here. All three of you.”

  Sarah glanced back at the cottage. “It has bad memories, but it has some good ones, too. We helped build it. It wasn’t just his. It was ours, too, and abandoning it now would be almost like giving in to him again.”

  “Are you sure?” Ana asked, looking from Sarah to the two girls.

  Carol, standing slightly behind Sarah, nodded. Kerry, her face buried in the older girl’s chest, didn’t say anything.

  “Thank you,” Sarah said, handing another satchel to Ana. “I wish you’d let me give you more.”

  “You’re going to need some of them, too,” Ana said. “Besides, there are other towns along the way where I can trade for goods when I need them.”

  “What about his guns?”

  “I don’t need guns.”

  “It’s dangerous out there.”

  “It’s more dangerous for someone carrying firearms.” Ana smiled. “Trust me. I’ve been out there for a while now. I know how it works.” Ana turned her horse around but paused briefly before looking back to Sarah and the girls. “Think about what I said. This place…it might not be worth keeping.”

  “We will,” Sarah said, and nodded. “I promise.”

  Ana wasn’t sure if she believed the other woman, but it wasn’t her job to make them do something they didn’t want to. Wasn’t that why she had done what she did? So they could make their own choices?

  She glanced back at them one final time and saw Sarah embracing the girls before leading them to the house. Ana didn’t know what was going to happen to them, and she wished she had the time to find out.

  But she didn’t, because Wash was out there, either already in Texas by now or damned close, and he was only getting farther away from her.

  She picked up where she left off, guiding the Walker back onto the same flat four-lane state highway she had been using since crossing the Kansas-Oklahoma border and pointing the horse south. The road had allowed her to go around Oklahoma City and all the other surrounding midsize cities, all the while guaranteeing that it would take her into Texas as long as she stayed on it.

  All the while, the conversation she’d had with Wash about the cities always echoed in the back of her mind:

  “They’re not happy places, Ana,” he had said. “Best to avoid them at all costs, if possible.”

  She hadn’t asked for details, but she’d heard stories. A lot of them were the stuff of nightmares.

  The chances that Wash had taken the same route as the one she was on now to his eventual destination were good, but not great. There were so many other ways into the Lone Star State from Kanter 11. And if he knew she might be following him down south, he might have gone out of his way to make sure she couldn’t find him easily.

  And if you actually did that, Wash, then you’re a real asshat.

  She’d hoped he might have stopped in some of the towns that she’d run across, but they hadn’t seen him. And it would have been easy to recognize Wash—a young slayer, the youngest she’d run across by far—traveling alone. Slayers always traveled in pairs, and they were almost always older men. Harder, more grizzled, and dangerous looking. Wash didn’t have the harder or the more grizzled part down, but he was certainly dangerous. Mathison had found that out the hard way.

  May you burn in hell, Mathison.

  The sun was in her eyes, and she was riding the Walker at a steady trot, with Emily’s voice in her head:

  “How are you going to find him?” her little sister had asked before they parted ways.

  “I don’t know,” Ana had answered truthfully. “But I know he’s going to Texas.”

  “Texas is a big state, Annie. If you don’t know where he’s going exactly, how are you going to find him?”

  “I don’t know, Em, but I have to try. He saved our lives. I owe him. We owe him.”

  “Which is why I should be coming with you.”

  “No,” Ana had said.

  Emily had argued, of course, but in the end, she’d relented.

  But her little sister was also right, just as Sarah had been right. Texas was a big state. How was she going to find one man in all that land? She had never been to Texas before, but everyone knew it was massive. What was that saying? Something about everything being bigger in Texas?

  They’re both right. How the hell am I going to find him down there?

  She let out a sigh. At least she had replenished her supplies and wouldn’t have to stop for more the rest of the way unless she wanted to. If she pushed the horse, there was a good chance she could be in the next state in forty-eight hours or so.

  And then what?

  She didn’t have a good answer, but she’d figure it out when she crossed that bridge. />
  She rode for two hours straight before finally stopping to give the Walker a rest next to a scrub tree, the first shade she’d come across in miles. Ana used the opportunity to dip into her freshly-refilled nonperishables and scanned the countryside around her for signs of…something.

  The part of Oklahoma she found herself in was a lot of flatlands and mountains in the distance, and she hadn’t seen anything that looked like woods since she left Sarah and the girls behind. Out here, she thought she could spot another living person a mile away with the naked eye.

  She took out a map Marie from Kanter 11 had given her and scanned the area, looking for prominent landmarks. It was difficult trying to think like a slayer, especially one that didn’t exactly act like one.

  Where are you, Wash? Where are you going?

  That was the thing about Wash that stuck with her: How unslayer-like he was. And at the same time, how so slayer-like. It was an odd contradiction, but then the man was a bit of an oddity. A slayer with no bite marks, nothing to indicate he’d ever been fed on by ghouls during The Purge, or since. Maybe that was what intrigued her most about Wash. That, and the fact that he had saved her and Emily’s life.

  “Goddammit, Wash,” she said out loud before folding up the map and putting it away.

  She was zipping up the backpack when the Walker, standing ten yards in front of her while dining on a thick patch of green grass, lifted his head and let out a loud, spontaneous whinny.

  “What?” Ana said.

  She turned around in the direction the horse was staring when she finally heard it.

  It was hard to make out at first—at least to her human ears—but it slowly gained in volume until it became impossible to ignore.

  A car, coming toward her.

  Three

  It was hard to miss and even harder to not know what it was. Ana was old enough to remember when everyone had a car (or two) and the roads were filled with them. The streets were still littered with them if you ventured around the cities and bigger towns, but finding one that worked and the fuel for it was another matter.

  This one, coming up the road toward her now, was definitely still working.